Facebook removals draw mixed reviews

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With help from John Hendel, Margaret Harding McGill and Nancy Scola

TODAY IN TECH

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FACEBOOK REMOVALS DRAW MIXED REVIEWS — Facebook’s decision to remove hundreds of accounts and pages over “inauthentic activity” ahead of the midterms was met by a mixture of praise and pessimism, underscoring the contentious nature of the debate over speech moderation online. The social networking site made a point to highlight both left- and right-leaning groups taken down, but that didn’t stop critics on both sides of the aisle from finding fault in the company’s approach.

— The ACLU, for one, warned Facebook to be mindful of selective enforcement. “Drawing the line between ‘real’ and ‘inauthentic’ views is a difficult enterprise that could put everything from important political parody to genuine but outlandish views on the chopping block,” said ACLU attorney Vera Eidelman. She pointed to one of the company’s other recent disinformation purges, which swept up a protest page tied to liberal activists, as a cautionary tale. Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group, questioned what took Facebook so long to take action against known purveyors of fake news. “Early voting is already happening in some states, and Election Day is a few weeks away, so it’s especially inexcusable that Facebook is only now deleting political disinformation pages,” Angelo Carusone, the group’s president, told MT.

PAGE OWNERS PUSH BACK — Chris Metcalf, the owner of nine left-leaning pages that were removed, expressed concern over the action in a message to Facebook shared with MT. “The problem with language like ‘inauthentic coordinated behavior’ is that everyone in this space coordinates. We swap each other's best performing content.” Metcalf added: “I'm not a bad actor. I'm a legitimate political activist that had abandoned monetization.” And Right Wing News creator John Hawkins, whose site was taken down from the platform, tweeted a link to a past article of his arguing that “conservatives are being destroyed” by companies like Facebook.

— But it wasn’t all jeers for Facebook. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), one of many lawmakers keeping tabs on tech’s efforts to combat fake news, called the move a “good step by Facebook.” “Social media companies are going to have to continue being proactive in identifying and responding to bad actors using their platforms,” he added on Twitter.And Dan Gainor of MRC TechWatch, a conservative watchdog group, told MT that on the surface, “this takedown sounds legitimate.” But he also cautioned, “Shutting down political accounts with hundreds of thousands of likes just before the election is concerning.” “That strategy could easily be abused,” he said.

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HAPPENING THIS WEEK

PRIVACY NOMS CLOBBERED THROUGH — The Senate late Thursday confirmed the nominations of three members, including a new chairman, to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — which has stood as a one-person show for roughly two years. Now the five-seat body, which monitors the government’s national security efforts, will get a needed boost with the additions of Jane Nitze and Edward Felten as board members and Adam Klein as chairman. The confirmations come at a critical time, with the review of the European Union-U.S. Privacy Shield data sharing agreement fast approaching. As MT readers know, European officials have long expressed alarm that key federal privacy posts, including on PCLOB, have remained vacant.

5G WIRELESS COMES TO SIOUX FALLS?— Today Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) is convening a field hearing on 5G in Sioux Falls, S.D., where MT expects his STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act, S. 3157, will score a lot of chatter. (The measure would set deadlines for states and localities on small cell action.) Despite Thune’s recent glum assessment that pushback from local officials could stall the legislation, he recently struck a more optimistic note about moving the legislation during the lame-duck session after the midterm elections. “If we could get this STREAMLINE bill going, too, I’d love to do that in wrap-up this year,” Thune told John this week.

— Among the witnesses: Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, a booster of the legislation and enthusiast for making his town an ideal mid-market case for successful 5G rollout and consequently, just maybe, “a telecommuting headquarters for the entire country,” as he told John early on this fall. Sioux Falls “got a little bit of pushback from our parks team because of the aesthetic worries” about the new wireless infrastructure, TenHaken added, suggesting 5G buildout (which requires far more but much smaller cell sites) brings “a newness to a lot of people that creates some of that pushback.”

SULLIVAN STILL BLOCKING FCC NOMINATIONS — Despite FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s attempt on Wednesday to resolve Sen. Dan Sullivan’s (R-Ark.) concerns over the subsidy funding flowing to his state, the Alaska Republican told John on Thursday the fix isn’t enough and that he will keep blocking reconfirmation of GOP Commissioner Brendan Carr, at least until he meets with Pai next week to discuss the matter. As John reported Wednesday, both Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) placed holds on the Carr nomination because of frustrations over subsidies sought by an Alaskan telecom company.

— Sullivan’s objections are not “necessarily how much they’re paying” to his state’s telecom companies but what he judges the lack of government predictability for the telecom industry. “What I am trying to make sure I get is that going forward, there’s transparency, there’s rules, there’s predictability, so people have certainty and they can make investment decisions and sign contracts,” Sullivan told John. “But right now, the way in which they operated, the system in my view has been very damaging to my constituents.” The FCC’s current subsidy system is “completely difficult, no rhyme or reason,” according to Sullivan, who points to the wrangling of Alaska’s GCI Communications Corp.

— An FCC spokesman was quick to counter that telecom companies need to justify why they need millions in subsidies: “When companies like GCI fail to maintain or transmit that documentation in a timely manner (or provide Commission staff with inaccurate information), they reap the consequences of their own delays and failure to comply with federal law.” And in any case, the FCC’s recent actions are bound to “provide the company with even greater certainty for future years,” the spokesman added.

FCC: LAW AND POLICY BACK NET NEUTRALITY REPEAL — The commission defended its repeal of the Obama-era net neutrality regulations to a federal appeals court late Thursday by arguing that both legal and policy analysis support the rollback. The decision to reclassify broadband internet as an information service — which has less regulatory oversight — is consistent with Supreme Court precedent, the FCC said in a brief responding to the challenge in the D.C. Circuit Court brought by tech companies, net neutrality advocacy groups and state attorneys general.

— Standing its ground: The Republican-led FCC eliminated rules banning the blocking, throttling or paid prioritization of web traffic in 2017, and the agency told the court that pre-existing antitrust and consumer protection laws, as well as its transparency rule, are enough to protect against harmful conduct by ISPs. “While it reflects different judgments than the Commission made in 2015, the Commission had ample discretion, following a ‘change in administrations,’ to reevaluate its policies,” the FCC wrote in the brief.

— The FCC also defended its ability to pre-empt state efforts to impose more stringent broadband regulations, arguing such laws conflict with the federal deregulatory policy. The issue is key to pending litigation over California’s law restoring net neutrality rules. (For more on that case, check out Margaret’s story).

REMEMBER THOSE POSTAL TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS? — They re-entered the spotlight this week as the U.S. Postal Service announced pricing hikes on various mailing products and services, including ones used by Amazon. You may recall President Donald Trump ordered that the task force be created earlier this year after blasting USPS for serving as a “delivery boy” for the e-commerce giant. But USPS denied any connection between its hikes, part of a regular review process, and either the task force or Trump. And John McHugh, whose Package Coalition lobbying group represents Amazon, told MT he didn’t “see the administration imprint” in the decision.

— McHugh also said the raises aren’t likely to trigger industry pushback. “Rate increases happen. It’s part of how the world works,” he said in an interview. “What we do oppose … is artificial, non-market mandated increases,” adding that these hikes “do not appear to be that kind of increase.” As for when we might see what the task force has recommended, McHugh said he is still in the dark about a timeline for public release but was heartened by discussions between administration officials and members of his group in recent months. “They all felt the meeting was positive, that it focused on the right areas, and nothing came up that would suggest there was a ticking time-bomb for packages,” he said.

‘SMALL TECH’ AND THE ANTITRUST DEBATE — The D.C.-based industry group ACT | The App Association is taking issue with the arguments made Thursday at an Open Markets event by Sens. Warner and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that the U.S. tech economy is hugely unfair to small competitors. Booker warned of "the startups crowded out by big tech platforms," while Warner decried what he said was the domination by Google and Facebook of the social media app marketplace.

— “The app economy isn’t just Candy Crush or Instagram. There are thousands of small businesses changing how healthcare is delivered to patients, how businesses serve their customers in real time, and deliver new banking and transportation services," said the group’s president, Morgan Reed, in a statement shared with MT. Reed pointed to what he said are the “161,590 employees in New Jersey and 224,140 in Virginia alone” working in the app economy.

— The bigger picture: Those numbers aside, the argument that Silicon Valley is unfair to tech's “little guy or gal” is quickly emerging as a go-to talking point in Washington. And it's bipartisan. Recently FTC Chairman Joseph Simons, a Trump appointee, said in a speech at Georgetown's law school that his agency intends to pay close attention to the "mergers of high-tech platforms and nascent competitors."

TECH QUOTE DU JOUR — “This right here is the iPlane One, it’s a hydrogen-powered airplane, and this is what our president should be flying in … we’re going to have Apple, an American company, work on this plane.” — Kanye West to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. (Note to Apple: We are standing by for details on this exciting announcement!)

About The Author : Cristiano Lima

Cristiano M. Lima is a technology reporter and the author of the Morning Tech newsletter. Prior, he worked as a breaking news reporter for POLITICO, covering the White House, Congress, the media industry and public policy. Cristiano first joined POLITICO as a senior web producer in 2016, managing social media accounts, producing content for the web, covering breaking news, contributing to the Morning Media and California Playbook newsletters and serving stints as a web editor.

A Brazilian-American journalist, Cristiano previously worked as a TV producer and reporter for Al Jazeera and Pennsylvania's WFMZ, a radio host for local NPR-affiliate WDIY and an intern for various other outlets. He's a two-time graduate of Lehigh University, earning both a Master's in 2016 as a Community Fellow and a Bachelor's in 2013 in politics and policy.